While logical principles seem timeless placeless and eternal their discovery is a story of personal accidents political tragedies and broad social change if a then b begins with logics emergence twenty three centuries ago and tracks its expansion as a discipline ever since logic is more than the work of logicians alone its discoveries have survived only because logicians have also been able to find a willing audience and audiences are a consequence of social forces affecting large . If a then b is a readable and thought provoking book on the social history of logic it shows how developments in logic such as the analysis of validity or the study of induction reflected and were shaped by social and cultural changes such as the rise of athenian democracy or the emergence of modern science some of the explanations seem pretty conjectural hence my four star rating but the book is definitely fun and worth reading it would be a perfect gift for a college student . If a then b begins with logics emergence twenty three centuries ago and tracks its expansion as a discipline ever since it explores where our sense of logic comes from and what it really is a sense of it also explains what drove human beings to start studying logic in the first place. If a then b begins with logics emergence twenty three centuries ago and tracks its expansion as a discipline ever since it explores where our sense of logic comes from and what it really is a sense of it also explains what drove human beings to start studying logic in the first place logic is more than the work of logicians alone